US President-elect Donald Trump named Peter Navarro, an economist who has urged a hard line on trade with China, to head a newly formed White House National Trade Council, the transition team said on Wednesday.
Navarro is an academic and one-time investment adviser who has authored a number of popular books and made a film describing China’s threat to the US economy as well as Beijing’s desire to become the dominant economic and military power in Asia.
Trump’s team praised Navarro in a statement as a “visionary” economist who would “develop trade policies that shrink our trade deficit, expand our growth, and help stop the exodus of jobs from our shores.”
Navarro, 67, is a professor at University of California, Irvine, and advised Trump during the campaign. His books include “Death by China: How America Lost its Manufacturing Base,” which was made into a documentary film.
China is paying close attention to Trump’s transition team and the possible direction of policy.
‘Don’t poke the Panda’
Navarro has also suggested a stepped-up engagement with Taiwan, including assistance with a submarine development program.
He argued that Washington should stop referring to the “one China” policy, but stopped short of suggesting it should recognize Taipei, saying: “There is no need to unnecessarily poke the Panda.”
China considers Taiwan a renegade province and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said in an interview carried on Thursday in the Communist Party of China’s official newspaper that China-US relations face new uncertainties but with mutual respect for core interests they will remain stable.
After his November 8 election win, Trump stoked China’s ire when he took a telephone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in a break with decades of precedent that cast doubt on his incoming administration’s commitment to Beijing’s “one China” policy.
In an opinion piece in Foreign Policy magazine in November, Navarro and another Trump adviser, Alexander Gray, reiterated the president-elect’s opposition to major trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
